


Loss Ficlet: 180 Seconds

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (In Chronological Order) [36]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, NSFW, Porn with Feelings, Summer of Smut, jamie x claire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 19:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19409821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: The sex games people play when they're reorienting to a carefree life.





	Loss Ficlet: 180 Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the Summer of Smut project that I am working on with @smashing-teacups and @desperationandgin. On the last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of June, July, and August, we will be posting one smutty ficlet. This is the first of the three that I will be writing in the Loss universe. It is not *cough* safe for work.

##  ****

##  **LOSS FICLET  
** 180 SECONDS  
JUNE 2019 

Slow and pulsing, Friday bled into Saturday.

Well into the sixteenth hour I had spent on my feet, I emerged from the sterile, artificial ventilation of the hospital into fresh air. It was just past midnight. My lungs ached drawing in the heavy, wet greenness of the outdoors. It had been pissing rain ( _Jamie’s term_ ) for more than seventeen days, and Edinburgh felt lush. Inhaling, I tipped my face towards the sky, looking for nothing at all and exhaled an entire week’s worth of worry ( _the confounding cases, odd complications, departmental in-fighting, and a dodgy tuna fish sandwich procured by Geillis that made me green in the gills shortly before five_ ).

“Ye look like ye could scream.”

My head snapped to the right, and my face broke.

 _Jamie_.

In film noir, the disembodied voice would have belonged to a trench coat-clad man in a pork pie hat, the deepest of shadows and grey filmy cigarette smoke obscuring the rest of his form.

Reality was better.

He was backlit by the solar lanterns dotting the perimeter of the landscaping. Clad in a leather jacket, too-tight t-shirt, and a pair of almost indecently slouchy jeans, he was handsome ( _effortlessly, breathtakingly so_ ).

He brandished my umbrella ( _polka dots, fuschia_ ). “Ye forgot this at home.”

I blinked. He didn’t disappear.

It took me a moment to muster a salutation, a breathy something or another that was gone from mind as soon as I uttered it ( _maybe a casual “hey there” or its less direct cousin “oh, hi”_ ). Without the adrenaline that the hospital must have had piped in with the air conditioning, I was wilting. And fast.

I started towards him, but my feet were leaden inthe grey, the clouded night _._

 _God. The world felt huge outside of the microcosm of the hospital_.

Jamie stayed silent, and I barely heard him approach. I turned to him only when the weight of my bag disappeared from my shoulder.

“Ye alright?” He lifted the smeared crop of rain-soaked curls from my forehead. I marshaled a halfway affirmative sound, and he smiled knowing I wouldn’t be able ( _or willing_ ) to do better than my non-answer. “I drove. Car’s just over there.”

“You’re in all black.” ( _A dumb observation from a tired wife._ )

“It’s my Johnny Cash look,” he said matter of factly, adjusting my bag across his body. Lifting the collar of his leather jacket, he flipped me off Mr. Cash-style with a smirk. He didn’t have quite the irreverence of Johnny Cash, but I had the remaining grace to dole out a withering pity smile. “I was going to take ye for a wee dram, a cheese plate or something, but ye look–”

“– _careful_ –”

“– _sae bonny_ that I dinna ken if I can take ye out. I fear another man may snatch ye right out from under my nose.”

Humming, I threaded my arm through his and rested my head on his shoulder. “When will you tire of me missing date night?”

“Havena gotten tired of ye yet.” His hand found mine, warming my surgery-chapped fingers. “And I’ll miss a year of date nights just to have a wee walk in the pissin’ rain wi’ ye. I’ll even buy ye some… weel… what do ye fancy?”

“A takeaway from the chipper. The _good_ one that’s hot enough to melt the container, and mushy peas.” I had hardly realized I was hungry, let alone capable of developing, identifying, and communicating a particular craving. Somewhat pleased with myself, I added, “In bed, but no funny business.”

And we did just that.

Jamie fell asleep first with my head on his chest, and his fingers raking a rhythmic trail through my hair. I counted his heartbeat, and in the space between the thundering _lub-dub_ of it, I thought of my patient in the intensive care unit ( _he dropped like a stone from a blood clot that likely would have killed him had he not been at physio chatting away with the same therapist who taught Jamie to walk again_ ). In a vain attempt to shut my mind off completely, I trained my eyes to follow specific raindrops as they met the window pane and then coursed down into my window box of marigolds.

I lapsed into sleep eventually.

In the morning, we woke with a groaning disappointment to the blaring of my alarm. Jamie had the look of a Saturday morning on his face as he nuzzled stubble-burnt cheeks into his pillowcase.

“Ye forgot the alarm,” he grumbled, drawing the pillow tight around his ears as though it would end the almost ambulant trilling.

I slapped uselessly at the nightstand, sending my watch and mobile careening to the floor. His hand found its way under my t-shirt and splayed over my belly, his thumb traveling suggestively low. I could only slur, “ _huh-uh, no_.”

At the refusal, Jamie chuckled and engaged my pulse point with his lips as I sighed, melting backwards into him. “Sleep another hour or two, _mo nighean donn_.”

“Or…” I squinted at the pale blue digits on the silenced clock. “Or _five_. Sorry.”

“Dinna fash. I’ll take care of myself.”

I thanked him for it.

And that was the last thing I remembered before waking five hours later to the distant roll of thunder. I felt well and truly rested for the first time in what felt like a century.

I checked my work mobile first. Early in the morning, my patient had moved from intensive care. I sent a prayer of gratitude up _somewhere_ before going to my hands and knees to search under the bed for my watch and personal mobile. With cupped fingers scraping away, my search turned up a single pearl earring ( _I had not known was missing_ ), a photograph, and finally my watch and phone.

Sitting back on my haunches, I fastened the watch and studied the creased, dust bunny-laden picture.

In the vast, storied infinity of film, I was perched on a snow-covered picnic bench and frozen in time with Jamie. I was assuming the perfect piggyback ride position ( _arms_ _around shoulders and one leg hooked around his waist_ ). I remembered the day in vivid, flavorful detail. We were probably no more than eight months into our relationship, but already living together. He looked positively dopey – a little drunk ( _beer and me_ ) and a lot in love ( _life and me_ ). I had joyful, starburst crinkles lining the corners of my eyes ( _a genetic gift from my dead mother; an inevitability with even the slightest dose of happiness despite meticulous applications of SPF 30_ ), and the memory alone of that day was enough to make me smile.

Back in those early days we had a budding bond, our discoveries as effortless as breathing.

I learned how the curve of Jamie’s shoulder rolled, relaxed, and drew tautunder my lips when I kissed along his scapula ( _the streak of a scar that resided there having an origin story I did not know then_ ) _._

I learned the tang of his shower-damp skin, just on the soft underside of his freshly-shaven jaw ( _mildly soapy at first, then warm and spicy in its maleness_ ).

I learned how he liked his scones ( _the wrong way, mind_ ).

( _At the small bistro table on my flat’s balcony, he watched me with marked intensity, a newsprint-gray thumb hovering over his lips. My body confused and mind reeling from flipping shifts, I had risen before him, wandered to a coffee shop, and selected an assortment of baked goodies and caffeine to share._

 _“Wot?” I had asked, eyebrows pinched together as the realization dawned on me that he was in a deep study of me. His lips parted and curved when I layered sun-molten jam on a scone and topped it with a dollop of cream._ _He said nothing and only shook his head when I again asked what he found so funny._

_Then, well past dark that night, my fingertips tingling and my belly thrumming from an act so debauched the memory would make me blush for a week, Jamie’s breath traversed the narrow sliver of pillow between us with an unbidden confession._

_He was singularly committed to be a universal, evangelical truth: cream should go before jam on a scone._

_My stomach well and truly dropped at that._

_I stammered, “But that’s… **wrong**.”_

_He sighed, coming somehow closer. “How will we make it as a couple, Sorcha? We’ve verra incompatible ideas about fundamental things.”_

_“I’ll die before I reverse the order,” I whispered as he tangled his fingers with mine beneath the covers._

_Throwing a leg over my middle with an apparent second wind, he whispered, “As will I, my Sassenach.”_ )

But when you love someone long enough, simple, delightful discoveries become the gilt, mythical things of an epic poem ( _Odysseus on his journey home, a tale of the creation of the seasons by a journey out of hell_ ).

I smoothed the crease out of the photograph as I rose from the floor and set about getting ready for the day.

Half an hour later, I had thoroughly scrubbed myself and tucked the photograph in the hip pocket of my yoga pants. The sound of my husband’s voice ( _chattering in a low, baby tone to the dog_ ) guided me towards the kitchen.

“G’morning,” I announced, giving said dog a generous pat before perching myself on the counter. Jamie was deep in the _mise en place_ stage of making _something_ , and his focus was evidently singular. It was apparent he had scant attention to spare for me. I followed-up, crossing my legs and leaning forward. “What are you making?”

“Guacamole,” he said blandly, continuing to slice a red onion with a surgeon’s precision. My instinct was to tease him about his meticulous knife skills ( _his ultimate design was to smash it all together after all_ ), but a realization struck me before the words crash past the barrier of my teeth and out of my reckless lips.

Jamie wasn’t engaged in an act of culinary anal retentiveness.

He was investigating the dexterity of his hand.

And his test made my heart flutter.

Under the fading scar on his finger, his joints worked as intended.

His fingers pinched, gripped, turned, spread, and drew back together.

And with very little effort.

He turned to the avocado. The blade pierced the soft yellow-green flesh again and again and again. It cleaved into the pit. He twisted his wrist and popped the brown orb free.

The moment seemed private, and I had just come to the conclusion that I should consider relocating to the couch when he said, “Ye’ve still got wee sleep creases on yer face.”

He leaned over, eyes catching mine, and kissed me on my cheek. I took a handful of his unruly mop of curls and tugged, my heart pounding with anticipation ( _like an assistant waiting for the sword of an inexperienced magician’s to ease into his wooden box_ ). “And _you’ve_ _still_ not gotten a haircut.”

“Fine observation.” He shook his head like some sort of noble stead flipping its mane in the wind. He returned to his task, tongue darting out to wet his still-smiling mouth. “When’s the last time we actually had some _time_ together?”

Exhaling, feeling a little desperate, I shrugged. “Sunday last? Otherwise, we’ve had opposite schedules for… awhile.”

“Aye, almost a week. I kent my baws were feelin’ a bit–”

“ _Don’t_ ,” I interrupted, voice pitching high and desperate with a suppressed laugh.

“ _Okay_ ,” he mumbled in a mildly unconvinced, but conciliatory way.

Throughout the interlude of banter, his chopping remained steady, practiced.

“You’re pouting like the only man on earth whose had to have a wank in the shower while his wife works.”

He shrugged, licking his lips again. “Maybe the entire U.K.”

My actual hunger only barely won the war with hunger for him ( _a part that wanted to turn his chin, memorize the glitter in his eyes, and kiss him breathless_ ). So I offered a well-meaning, sarcastic chuckle, and just watched, somewhat awed by how skillfully he wielded the knife.

After a time, he asked, “Did ye ken there are no muscles in yer fingers?”

“I did.” He had caught me watching. I bit down on my lip, relishing the widening slash of his smile even though it was aimed down at the cutting board. “Are you an expert in anatomy now?”

“Oh, aye, _a nighean_. Basically a surgeon.”

“I’ll see if I can get you privileges at the hospital.”

His eyes twinkled like the big bang ( _the creation of an entire universe_ ) existed in real time in his mind. He flexed each of his digits, adjusting his grip over the hilt of the knife once, twice, three times like a pianist scaling up and down C major. “I ken how yer doctor brain works. Ye’re checkin’ me for _abnormalities_.”

“Not abnormalities.” He hummed, fell silent. “I’m still feeling a little bit of… _wonder_ … at you is all.”

I ached suddenly for contact. Dropping a hand on his shoulder, I closed my eyes to the rhythmic _rise, pull, fall, rise, pull, fall_ of his shoulder as he chopped. After a not insubstantial bit of time ( _enough for him to finish slicing and cleaning avocadoes and move on to creating a soapy, mound of minced cilantro_ ), I declared, “I found something.”

“Did ye now?” He steadied my hip with an oniony hand, his fingers pressing into my flesh slightly ( _a lingering question and promise for later_ ) as I tilted to the side and wrestled the photograph from my pocket. I held it up triumphantly. I followed the path of his eyes as he glanced at the picture. “Ye were _so awkward_ then,” Jamie said, squinting and wiping the blade of his knife on the front of his apron.

I shrugged, unable to deny the truth of the assertion ( _my mind reeling back to an early, blurted admission that I was a cat person and a thousand other moments where I put my foot firmly into my mouth_ ). “Still am, and you fell for my awkwardness hook, line, and sinker.”

“I didna have a choice. Yer awkwardness didna give me the opportunity not to fall for ye.”

Plucking a hunk of avocado from the bowl, my eyes rolled heavensward. Jamie took the opportunity to bat my hand away like he was afflicted by the presence of a wayward child plucking early nibbles from a roasted Christmas chicken.

“It’s true, Sassenach. I wanted ye.” At that, he set the knife down and braced himself on the countertop. Softly, he added, “More than I ever wanted anything in my life.”

“Oh,” I breathed, somehow struck dumb by the admission, despite the fact that I had been connected to the man at the hip ( _and by our hips_ ) for more than three years.

“ _Oh_ ,” he mimicked, somehow trilling his voice on the single syllable, rolling his eyes, and picking up his knife. “It cannae be a surprise that I make myself mad wi’ lovin’ ye.”

“Of _course_ not.” I adjusted my perch on the barstool and stole a bit of tomato this time. “You drive me mad, too, of course.”

“There isna another lass I’d rather be a nut with.”

“ _That_ sounds _filthy_ , my lad.” I reached for another hunk of avocado, and feigned indignation when he swatted me on the thigh. “I’m _hungry_.”

“Hang _on_. Soon.”

I released a bleating, sheep-like noise as he scraped the ingredients into a bowl. I stole another hunk of avocado and delighted in noisily expressing my admiration as I chewed.

Fully exasperated, he exhaled. “Oh for _Christ’s sake_ , Claire.”

Pleased beyond measure with my filched bits, I offered an unattractively avocado-smeared response ( _teeth bared, head tilted, eyes crossed_ ).

“Ye’re lucky that I love ye.”

“Oh, I know.”

 _This_ had been difficult – our transition back to a comfortable existence after California.

For a time, even after he was off crutches, the too-near history of California had existed like an atmosphere around us.

It was a barrier that separated us from the world ( _our world_ ).

We were less playful, less prone to bouts of the unabashed flirtation that had been a mainstay of our relationship. Moments where the world became a space for only us two, where we could become so intensely focused on one another that it felt like touch alone could singe our fingertips, were few and far between.

Of course we had moments of levity ( _an abridged tryst in his boss’s coat closet, a splash of soapy dishwater while doing up the dishes that led to Jamie mutter “_ _oh Christ, oh Claire_ _” as I went to my knees in front of him, a handsy moment in a cinema car park after we abandoned a movie halfway through_ ), but _this_ felt different. With my late rise, the lost photograph, the playful protectiveness over his well-formed slices of avocado, we were at a turning point. 

Somehow we had made it _back_. 

Back to loving one another _easily_ rather than loving one another _desperately_.

With the finished guacamole, we situated ourselves in an indoor blanket fort. We watched _Killing Eve_ while consuming an assortment of “wee nibbles” Jamie had prepared during my lie-in. We shared a margarita and jointly howled at the dog to “ _fucking stop!”_ when he dipped his curious snout into my glass of water. 

After a fair bit of Villanelle, we settled against one another’s sides and channel surfed, agreeing our lazy day demanded less plot.

We landed on the Diving World Championships.

Deep into our second tube of prawn cocktail Pringles, I winced at an ill-conceived dive where the diver’s body unfolded horizontally into a water-slapping belly flop. I announced my assessment of where said dive had gone south, along with a careful description of the type of splash that my Googling reported was appropriate. 

Jamie countered my critique that I was terribly judgmental for someone who “ _can barely jog on a treadmill wi’out goin’ ass over tea kettle_.”

Pulling away from his side, I scoffed, declaring, “I’ll have you know that I am _very_ athletic.”

“Is this the kind of thing to which a husband is meant to say, ‘ _uh huh, sure, whatever ye say?_ ’ Because I dinna ken how to respond.”

“I have a _solid_ competitive streak.”

“Aye, but no’ about sport. Ye’ve got opinions on these poor lads in their wee knickers–”

“– _Speedos–_ ” ( _any red-blooded woman would have opinions about men in Speedos with six-packs and pool water sluicing down Greek statue-like musculature_ )

“–but ye dinna have the _patience_ or _dedication_ for a truly competitive sport.”

“Really?” I carefully brought one leg over his lap and settled myself onto his thighs. It was an act that I would realize later was done with complete abandon for the first time since California( _no worry over whether my weight would cause him discomfort, no inspection of his face for a twist of pain or intake of breath_ ). I planted my palms on his chest. “Then I have a new sport to propose.”

“Huh,” he murmured, gathering fistfuls of my t-shirt. “When have ye ever been athletic?”

“I’ve climbed a rock wall for you a few times,” I protested anemically against his mouth, wondering if he could taste the saltiness of my words. “And I will admit that I am more _academically_ oriented, but this is a long game that requires _significant_ patience.”

“It’s a _sex game_ , isn’t it?” His voice was dry as sandpaper. I tilted my head and made an exasperated little noise. He gathered a handful of the curls that fell over my shoulder and rolled his eyes, urging, “Describe the rules of yer sport.”

I draped my arms across his shoulders and leaned against him fully, pressing him further into the belly of the couch. He was almost singularly focused on the crease between us where my breasts were molded into his chest. _We were off to a good start_.

“It’s a game of no touching. For three minutes–”

“Why in the name of the Lord would we agree not to–”

“–because teasing each other is _fun_.”

He made an unconvinced, low, growling noise.

“Just think, Jamie. One of us is on top and can do _anything_ to the other, but the one on the bottom is helpless.”

I ran my tongue along his ear lobe. When he shifted beneath me and took a hold of my hips, I engaged in no small amount of internal celebration.

“On top you can use your mouth, your fingers…” I glanced down, quirked a single eyebrow as best as I could, and shrugged. “Or whatever _else_ strikes your fancy.”

He tightened his grip as I ground down against him and sank my fingers into the curls at the nape of his neck. I relished the hitch in his breath, the way he swallowed, and how his forehead fell forward to rest on my shoulder. “But if you aren’t feeling up to a game, or you perhaps feel that you wouldn’t be a good player, we can just fuck.”

“Claire…” One broad hand released my hip and went roughly to my breast, giving it a kind of eager squeeze.

I chuckled darkly and pulled back. “If you’re worried you’ll lose, you can go first.”

The offer was hardly out of my mouth before Jamie was flipping our positions and straddling me. My heart leaped into my throat, and my stomach sank to my feet, awash in an effervescent, New Years Eve midnight champagne-like anticipation.

Beneath him, I realized that my game had _somehow_ shifted.

“When ye’re under me ye canna touch me, but I can do…”

( _a beat and a breath, a look and a smile_ )

“… _anything_ … for three minutes?”

Biting my lower lip, I managed only a slurred ‘ _mmmhmmm_.’

He kissed me then, and I arched into the parabola of his looming chest( _sunward – up and towards warmth and light itself_ ). I kissed back, moaning shamelessly at the introduction of his unmannered, tongue that tasted faintly of margaritas ( _salt, sour, smoky agave_ ). Our mouths separated with a wet, seal-popping sound, and he touched his lower lip. “Ye can kiss back from the bottom?”

Making up the rules as I went, I let my body ease back into the couch and mumbled, “It’s only fair. It isn’t fun if we can’t kiss…”

Without protest, he accepted the self-serving amendment to the game’s rules, and inquired, “What does the winner of yer wee game get?”

I tightened my grip and felt the couch cushion give beneath my fingertips. One hundred and eighty seconds would be pure, exquisite torture, and I squared my shoulders as if posturing would make a fig of difference.

“To the winner? _All_ the spoils…”

“Aye?” he asked, watching intently as I released the cushion and redirected my hands into the waistband of his jeans.

“The winner can do _whatever_ she wants–”

“–or _he–_ ”

I rolled my eyes, conceding what seemed to be an unlikely possibility that he may be the one to emerge victorious from my ad hoc sex game.

“ _Carte blanche_ to the winner.”

“ _Carte blanche_?” he echoed. I squeezed the hard-muscled mound of his arse; his eyes stormed dark before he dragged his lips along my jawline. He moved to my temple, nuzzled it with his nose, inhaled.

I added, “It means blank check–”

“Christ, Claire, I ken what ‘ _carte blanche_ ’ means…”

“You seem a little _hazy_ at the moment…” I glanced down at the burgeoning bulge to the right of his zipper, an aching tell that my game was already having its intended consequence.

“I _meant_ ,” he said, voice going a little testy, “ _are ye serious_ about the blank check?”

I considered the idea for a moment, stilling my fingers. “I trust you.”

“Alright.” He still sounded tentative, but was quite clearly planning _something_ under all of that red hair. “No touching, just kissing. Ye just _take it._ ”

“And _you_ just take it, too.”

“Aye, now get yer wee hands off me, and get ready.”

I gave him a final squeeze, and his hissed exhalation lifted a curl off of my forehead.

This was going to be fun.

I smirked, and draped my arms across the back of the couch. “Do your best, soldier.”

At that, he called out, “Alexa… set the timer for three minutes.”

And we were off.

Conceptually, three minutes does not seem like a long time.

But it is.

It may as well be a lifetime when your hands tingle with the desire to trace the lines of a lover’s body, to fill themselves with familiar ( _yet never boring_ ) flesh, to arouse yourself as you arouse another.

Jamie started a slow burn early in his three minutes.

He planted a kiss on each of my eyebrows and then my cheeks.

The tip of my nose and the bow of my parted lips.

His mouth twitched when I inhaled, and he pulled back.

“I mean to make ye beg for me, _a nighean_.”

My stomach clenched at the promise, and my hands curled into the couch.

My husband’s familiar hands ghosted across my ribcage, up my sides, and down my arms before settling on my hips.

“I mean to make ye _mine_ , Claire.”

At first, I held my breath, and then I whimpered, unable to tell him I already was his, just as he was mine. ( _He already knew anyway_.) I left him blanketed in silence for no reason other than the sound that would have come from me was _too much_ , _too soon_.

He took my mouth and kissed me breathless ( _like he was desperate for me, needed me, like he knew I would never break and he could never break me_ ).

He advanced to my throat, tasting the place where my sounds built and sheltered in anticipation of an explosion ( _or any moment in which silence just became too much_ ).

It was as though he had been genetically engineered to draw from me an entire symphony of sounds.

Because he did.

A gasp ( _a pleading quietly formed by a brain rapidly floating up up up like an over-filled balloon_ ). A moan ( _a cross of his name and the Lord’s name, a belly-deep sound reserved for his ears_ ). An inhalation ( _sharp and made of vowels_ ). A sigh ( _lighter than air_ ). A plea ( _composed of words not committed to any dictionary_ ).

His eyes and hands reeled me in then like a helpless fish on a line, and he tugged me to the edge of the couch. After getting my hips perched _just so_ , he admitted, “It’s been about forty-five seconds, and I have to say, I wasna sure that I’d like this game…”

 _‘It’s great_ ,’ my mind grumbled as I bit down on the inside of my cheek.Jamie urged the waistband of my pants over my arse and midway down my thighs.

“Purple knickers today?” he asked with a quirked brow. “What _are_ these?”

He cupped me between my legs ( _drawing forth a whimper as his fingers molded to me in a firm promise_ ). He paused, rustled for the silky tag at the hip, and then looked up at me.

“I’ve confirmed that yer wee panties are 100 percent _cotton_ , and made in France.” He curved his fingers, molded them somehow closer to me, and responded to an under-my-breath burst of profanity with, “Did ye get them in France?”

When I didn’t respond, he chuckled and tugged my pants the rest of the way off and threw the garment over his shoulder. He kissed the arch of my left foot and I considered kicking him for a moment, but it seemed to be in bad form to retaliate for a game of my own creation.

He kissed a shin, a knee, one thigh and then the other. “Yer thighs are positively _trembling_ , Sassenach.”

“Well spotted.”

With his hands sharing the load of one thigh each, he let his fingers sink into my skin as if to steady me. It had the opposite effect. “I worry for ye, bein’ in such a state.”

“I’ll bet you do, Jamie.” He released one thigh, reached for the margarita that we had been sharing and took a long sip. Knitting my eyebrows together, a sudden thought bothered me. “If you try to spit that into my mouth you’ll be masturbating in the shower for a month.”

He was glowing when he raised an eyebrow, swallowed, and set the glass down. “Dinna fash. I have better plans for ye than _that_.”

It was a statement that he seemed intent on proving. He redoubled his efforts. Blowing a long, cool stream of air over the flesh just below my navel, he hooked me behind the knees and drew me closer to the edge of the couch.

“Goosebumps?” he trilled inquisitively, the lift in his voice full of mock concern. In the pit of my stomach, my internalized disappointment at having conceived of this game in the first place sank like a stone. “Are ye _verra_ chilled?”

Reminding myself that I would be able to give as good as I had gotten in just under a minute, I attempted stoic silence. Just as he trailed his ice-chilled lips along the elastic waistband of my knickers, Alexa announced ( _from somewhere a thousand miles away_ ) that he had thirty seconds left.

‘ _You can do this_ ,’ I coached myself.

But then, he was easing the fabric between my legs aside. “How do ye think thirty seconds of oral’d do ye?”

I ground my teeth together, hands dropping to my sides and fisting the soft throw beneath me. My voice was anything but even keel as I ground out, “You’ve wasted ten seconds, and have about twenty now.”

“Shame,” he mumbled, pouting with an almost sincere regret though his tone took an opposite meaning.

He kissed the soft skin just above my pubic bone before rising to my mouth. I was grateful for only a moment when it seemed that he was going to spend the clock down with a relatively chaste kiss, but then his fingers were back between my legs.

Cupping. Spreading.

His thumb became a weapon.

Circling. Swooping. Pressing.

My obscenities were nothing more than inelegant croaked pleas between his smiling lips (“ _oh fuck, oh please_ ”).

Palm up, he introduced two well-mended fingers and curved them _just so_.

But then the timer was up, and he pulled back, grinning with movie star eyes as he sucked his fingers clean. “I _like_ yer wee game, Sassenach.”

I took a moment before rising to catch my breath and to allow my arousal to fade from an aching, consuming heat to a mere dull annoyance. Jamie carefully situated himself on the throw, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Do yer level best.”

I hummed that I most certainly would try, knotting my hair into a bun atop my head before calling out to Alexa to set the timer for three minutes. I cracked my neck, popped my knuckles, and smirked at his grimace.

“Ye’ll get arthritis if ye dinna stop purposefully crackin’ yer bones.”

“I’ll take the chance,” I muttered, stepping towards him and taking the hem of his t-shirt in hand. The clinical methodology of stripping my husband to the most boring pair of white boxer briefs that I had ever seen was born more of utility ( _an effort to save myself time_ ) than seduction.

“Waste of thirty seconds,” he chided, tongue clicking as I rose over him.

“There should be a rule that whoever is on the bottom has to shut the fuck up.”

“ _Language_. The dog can hear ye curse, and–”

His mouth snapped shut as my purple cotton knickers and his white cotton boxer briefs became enmeshed in a sordid love affair on the couch. Close to his ear, my voice pitched lower than a whisper, and as I pressed myself to him, I asked, “Do you feel that?”

From his lack of a response, the answer was plainly ‘ _yes_.’

“Wet friction,” I mumbled, rocking forward and then back, thighs squeezing his hips. “Can you feel me through them? Can you feel what you _did_ to me? What you _do_ to me?”

This time he slurred some version of “ _uh-huh_ ” that made me smile.

I took my time then, leaving my fingerprints along an oft-traveled route of his too-well-muscled terrain. Feather light, I traced the vein running along the front of his left bicep, into the crook of his elbow. I investigated the longitude and latitude of his trapezius, sank my fingers into his hair as I pressed my hips against him and arched one final time before standing.

As I studied the half-destroyed spread on the coffee table, I made a discovery. A new sound in Jamie’s repertoire. A greased and ugly keening kind of plea that sounded more like something that would come from an out-of-tune woodwind in a primary school orchestra than my husband.

“Feeling frustrated, my lad?”

Wordlessly, Jamie lolled his head to the side and looked at _something_ in the distance ( _the wall, the muted television, the rain-splattered window, something else entirely_ ).

 _Oh God was I enjoying this_.

I made a show of turning my back to him, bending at the waist, and picking up the almost-empty bowl of guacamole. I threaded my glance at him upside down and past my waist. “Do you think we incorporate food into sex often enough?”

Again, he remained quiet and appeared singularly focused on my purple knickers.

“ _Well_?”

His jaw was working overtime, as though it might save him from an unsavory fate. “Food’s no’ meant for sex.”

Shrugging, I heaped a healthy dollop of guacamole on my middle and fore fingers. “I’ve never thought of _guacamole_ as a particularly _sexy_ food, but it’s _spreadable_. And you did _such_ a nice job with it today.”

“Thanks. I kent ye’d like it,” he mumbled, as though the _compliment_ was the part to focus on.

Tut-tutting, I went to my knees and closed the short distance between us.

White knuckled fingers pulsed at the edge of the couch cushion as I got closer.

Breath hitching, his face tipped forward until he could look at me with his chin resting in the small divot between the symmetrical brackets of his clavicles. The part of me that longed for _touch_ ( _a gentle hand along my cheek with a whispered Gaelic endearment, a soft pinch of my chin to tilt my face up as he expressed his love, a nudging encouragement at the back of my neck_ ) was well and truly smothered by the part of me that simply _loved_ riling up my husband.

The pink cheeks. The lips that went from pursed to parted and back again. The flare of his nostrils. The bobbing of his throat.

“I’m not sure if you know this, but I have a favorite part of your body.”

His hand came up, ghosted along the side of my cheek ( _the heat from his palm close enough to warm my skin_ ), and then fell with a desperate, hollow thump onto the cushion next to his thigh. “My mind?”

“ _Fine_ , a _second_ favorite.” For a moment, the tortured expression on his face was replaced by a haughty, self-aware kind of look. “And it _isn’t_ your cock, so _just stop_.”

“It’s a shame such a fine cock’s wasted on ye.”

“ _Such_ a shame,” I parroted. I lifted his arm and placed it carefully along the back of the couch. Keeping my hand curved around the taut muscle of his bicep, I added, “You work the most on _these_ but _this_ right here…”

I smeared a line of guacamole along his side obliques and tapped the excess along the misshapen piano keys of his ribs. 

He flinched a bit and groaned, “ _Christ_ ye’re weird sometimes.”

“You _did_ say that you fell for my awkwardness.”

Without further ado, I leaned forward and started to suck the guacamole clean off of him ( _with the not-so-stunning realization as my tongue met skin that I was actually really very awkward_ ). My free hand found its way between his legs and into his shorts, circled him and stroked and tugged and traced, and I lapped him well and truly clean. By the time I finished, his chest was heaving and a series of blasphemies was pouring from his mouth. 

“You will need to go to confession if you don’t stop,” I commented as I made my way back onto his lap.

His response ( _barely audible through his gritted teeth_ ) hatched from me a victorious smirk: “I’m no’ the only one.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I mumbled, my cheek resting on his and my mouth at the shell of his ear. “Not about church.”

He hummed, and I eased his boxer briefs all the way down, smoothed my palm up and down his length. 

When his hips pressed up, I shook my head. “Careful, unless you’re prepared to lose.”

Only his chattering teeth responded ( _sharp, bone-on-bone, click click click_ ).

“My question? Do you mind terribly, Jamie?”

He shook his head ( _a shallow, barely there gesture_ ). Alexa announced that I had only thirty seconds remaining. He exhaled, swallowed, smacked his lips.

“How do you think you’d do with thirty seconds of oral?” I licked my lips, looked down between us, and smiled at my handiwork. I had never been one to get hot from the sight of male full-frontal nudity ( _even Jamie, as spectacular as he thought his equipment to be and as well-formed as it was_ ), but I did take some small measure of pride in driving him mad and seeing what I could do to him.

“Ye’re a bloody tease.”

I swallowed the accusation when he kissed me ( _hard, unrelenting, intrusive_ ). I pulled away only when the timer declared that my time had ended. I collapsed backwards onto the couch and waited as he carefully tugged his boxer briefs all the way off, felt a shiver glide up from my belly as he gently palmed his cock once, twice, three times while grumbling.

After a time, he rolled his shoulders and turned his attention back to me.

“I mean to make ye beg me for mercy, Sassenach. Ye shallna have it, though. Not right away.”

The glimmer in his eye was delicious. Of their own accord, my legs fell apart. He went to his knees. 

Based on the growl building in his chest and the speed with which he stripped me bare of my shirt and bralette, I had expected the start of his three minutes to be searing. My mouth went dry at the promise of my husband being unrelenting, unforgiving, focused.

But what he was instead made me breathe harder and need to fight even more against the inclination to touch him.

It started with his arms around my waist, drawing me close as he pressed his cheek above my heart.

He told me he loved me, tenderly kissed a small patch of skin at the innermost curve of my breast.

I wondered if he could see the flutter of my skin there ( _my heart had surely blown past my ribs in its failure to fight his gravitational pull_ ).

He ran his nose and lips down the centerline of my body and found the nucleus of where I was yearning for him most ( _the lowest part of my belly_ ). He whispered something there, his breath hot and the syllables running together in a language I’d never had a reason to learn.

With cartographer’s unhurried precision, his lips charted my landscape ( _a hipbone, a flank, a series of ribs, the cap of a shoulder, a single clavicle, and my throat_ ). His eyes did not leave me as he removed my panties, let them fall between us.

He kissed down my arms, measured his mouth against the inner crease of my elbow, and rested his cheek on the rough skin opposite it.

The uneven, ineffectual metronome of my pulse at my wrist became a place for his lips to count before he pressed them into the spaces between my fingers, and read the fortune hidden on my palm ( _not the one that some Marlboro Red-smoking psychic years earlier had made up for a desperately grieving girl_ ). He kissed the faint scar where he had scored our flesh sitting across from one another on the bed.

_I was married to him; we were handfast. We were a single being, ancient through tradition and eternal by vow._

“I can feel yer heartbeat when I kiss ye,” he whispered, lips moving to my throat. “I can tell when ye need me.”

I croaked his name, feeling something expanding impossibly under my sternum, in my belly, between my legs.

“How do you feel?” he asked, voice low as he carefully laid my hand to rest on the couch, gently tracing each finger from knuckle to tip.

Swallowing, I lifted my hands to the back of his neck without another thought. I would have lost my own game again and again ( _forever_ ) just for the truth of the response that I whispered. “Delicate.”

He looked at me, the tenderness in his eyes fathomless, but nonetheless intimately known in its infinity.

A second passed.

Another.

An eternity and one more as I traced his hairline with my thumbs.

He kissed me like he couldn’t help it, like there was no way for him to keep going. It was as if he would stop breathing, his cells would cease to reproduce, the sympathetic and parasympathetic inputs that maintained his heart’s rhythm would give out completely. Needy, but slow. A languid kiss where neither of us had anything left to memorize about the other or to reveal.

Then, for the first time since California, he lifted me.

“Ye need me now, aye? Just as I need you?”

I managed to nod.

In his arms, I was nothing more than arousal-pink deadweight with my calves only barely grazing the backs of his bare thighs. As he ascended the stairs with my body almost limp in his arms, my mind swam through its own disassembled bits. I could bring myself only to focus on need ( _for him, for the physical affirmation of the connection we had, for relief_ ).

Need as an abstraction began with this man. ( _Adam and Eve and the apple._ )

It ended with him, too. ( _The end of days, darkness culled by blinding white light rising well beyond the horizon._ )

I barely registered Jamie’s pause to push open our bedroom door or the feeling of the duvet beneath my knees as he sat on the edge of the bed. He cradled me in his lap, and underwater with need, I wound my legs around his waist. My body was an invasive species yearning to _climb climb climb_ and wrap and get closer and closer and closer. He tangled my left hand with his right as he reached down between us to find his way home. I didn’t take my eyes from his, and when I felt him cresting inside of me ( _a wide, probing, stretching feeling_ ), I let myself sink over him.

Moving together was as easy as breathing.

He squeezed my fingers, and kissed my cheek when I gasped and ground down on him. With a gentle pressure on my hips, he pulled me nearer with an almost awed appreciation in his eyes. He held me there, and a question started from my lips: “Are you okay, I–”

“–stay still, just for a moment–” he managed, interrupting me as he drew our tangled hands to the beautifully stretched space where we were joined.

He shifted, stirred inside of me, and I whimpered a plea.

“I want ye to feel good, _mo nighean donn_.”

Broad fingertips picked up moisture, smeared it carefully, and then embarked on a gentle, arcing exploration of where I was most sensitive.

“Tell me, do ye feel good?”

I whimpered, nodded. I mumbled, “ _Uhhuh_.” 

He smiled.

When his hips started again, I felt each movement in my belly.

As I rose, his fingers burrowed into me, like he could make himself last forever, imprint this moment and make it our eternity. As I fell, he thrust up to meet me halfway. As we paused, he whispered things to me in an dateless tone, a forgotten language ( _need, want, love, lust, dreams_ ).

We had at least a week of not being together to make up for. I wanted to make it last, to stay like that ( _intimately joined, face-to-face, the pulse deep in my thigh and in my belly the only indication of passing time_ ) forever. 

But I felt the quickening, the ache for release building and growing. 

I felt it go molten in my toes, my shins, my chest, my fingertips.

I knew his tells – he was almost there, too. The staccato rhythm of his stroke. The shudder that coursed across his abdomen as I pressed my palm over his navel, begged him to hang on for just a few more moments. _For me_. The looping figure eight he had drawn again and again on lost its shape. He looked down, muttered “ _fuck, Claire, fuck”_ and allowed his fingers to explore new geometric shapes against me, his touch a frenzied oncoming storm.

His eyes closed as a wayward bead of sweat coursed down past his eyebrow and into the corner of his eye.

I kissed it away, smacked my lips at the alkaline burn of it, groaned, and begged him again to hang on _just for a minute_.

He kissed the corner of my mouth, and then let his fall open. His head lolled forward, a crown of sweat-damp curls tucking beneath my chin. He called out to God. He cried out for me.

I rolled my hips, felt the first promise of an ending glimmering at the edges of my consciousness. I did it again, hissed something profane as he thrust back against the movement.

_We had nothing to confess._

It was as if nothing existed beyond the threshold of our bedroom, beyond the seemingly unbreakable circle of his arms around me.

He mumbled a plea for me to finish with him.

I clung to him, attempted to draw him closer, imploring him one final time to “ _hang on, please, keep going_.”

His last thrust was measured, hard, like he could force the fusion of our souls by pouring himself into me.

He spilled himself into me.

And everything contracted then - exploded, burned. I gave in, falling forward to close the space between us as the feeling ripped through me. I relinquished my vision to the moment, the pulsating warmth that rolled like waves and bubbled and made me howl into his sweat-damp temple, drag my teeth along his cheekbone.

The universe was, indeed, contained within the perimeter of our bedroom.

The muscles in my belly, between my legs, ached and burned and exploded with pleasure.

I may have made another noise, but my thrumming bass heartbeat, tympanic breathing, and soprano songstress flesh crowded it out of my consciousness.

My vision fractured into silver slivers behind painfully-cinched eyes.

His thumb paused, and I raked him from abdomen to hips.

He started again with his thumb, a low chuckle the only noise that my brain could prioritize.

Bursts of color bathed the backs of my eyelids.

As I reentered the earth’s atmosphere, I realized that he was stroking me ( _my hair, my arms, my stomach, my thighs_ ).

He kissed my neck and told me I was beautiful.

 _Bliss_.

After a time, when the pulsing made me feel languid and heavy, I asked what he was going to claim as his prize for winning the game. Taking a clump of sweaty curls and pushing it aside, he sealed his lips to my shoulder and said that he’d already gotten it. I grumbled that we had both gotten _quite_ the prize, but that he earned his blank check. He promised to think about it.

The rain picked up, rattling the window panes.

We were washed clean by it somehow.

I covered his hand where it hovered low on my stomach. His fingers flexed. “Do ye think that we… ye ken… made a bairn?”

Unable to bring myself to break the moment ( _it was not really the right part of the month for that_ ), I smiled and whispered, “Maybe.”

 _Maybe_.

Maybe.


End file.
